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olsmeister writes "Titan has been a particular focus of attention because of its dense, complex atmosphere, its weather and its lakes and oceans. Now it looks as if Titan is even stranger still. The evidence comes from careful observations of Titan's orbit and rotation. This indicates that Titan has an orbit similar to our Moon's; it always presents the same face toward Saturn and its axis of rotation tilts by about 0.3 degrees. This data allows astronomers to work out Titan's moment of inertia and points to something interesting. The numbers indicate that Titan's moment of inertia can only be explained if it is a solid body that is denser near the surface than it is at its center."

You don't have to be a quantum mechanic,To know that this ocean is a little Methanic,If atmospheric densities remain the same,Then other hydrocarbons are not to blame,For the process being just a little too Titanic.

You don't have to be a quantum mechanic,To know that this ocean is a little Methanic,If atmospheric densities remain the same,Then other hydrocarbons are not to blame,For the process being just a little too Titanic.

There once was a chap called PhongWho was rapping a lyrical songWhen he started to blowHis words didn't flow,"It rhymes, so what could be wrong?"

A limerick doesn't just rhyme.One has to consider the time.It's a concept called meter,That causes the reader,To laugh at your lyrical crime.

Stuff like this brings out the inner child in me, wanting to explore and see these discoveries with my own eyes. Sometimes I wish I was born 500+ years from now so I could actually be able to explore these strange worlds with my own eyes. Not saying humans would have these places colonized but at least have some sort of outpost nearby able to fully explore these places robotically or with human presence.

Or you could go for the more interesting stuff... The microscope, telescope, submarine and airplane were invented in the last 500 years and they all allow you to see worlds noone could imagine 500 years ago. Travelling beyond your own county and the local market was pretty rare as well (unless you were either important or unlucky).

Sometimes I wish I was born 500+ years from now so I could actually be able to explore these strange worlds with my own eyes.

Sadly, you'd be just like you are now. Ignoring (or undervaluing) the fact that you've got access to explore strange words that people 500 years ago could only dream about.

If those people 500 years ago weren't dreaming about what's normal for us now I doubt he'd be able to dream about something so amazing now. It's the fact that we keep looking forward that makes all this "impossible" stuff happen.

Scientist are still finding out new things about our planet, & ur here now & can see these things, so why not instead of talking about how you "wish you could explopre these strange worlds with your own eyes" why don't you just do it?!! Try exploring whats on your doorstep (i.e; your own planet) first. Our own planet hold hundreds/thousands of different worlds inside our own, surely thats at least just as interesting as other planets possibly having an ocean, if not more?!!

Honestly, Titan would be as "done" as the Moon is "done" today. Been there, done that, pretty boring piece of rock in the sky really that nobody's bothered to visit for almost 40 years. If we go there, yeah there's methane in fluid form but it's sterile like an operating room it will be just another one of those rocks.

If you really wanted to be the inner geek, you should go back to Leonardo da Vinci's time, when you could be a multi-discipline genius and most of his inventions really were hands on. Between electron microscopes, giant telescopes, huge particle colliders, robots and probes it's mostly reading stuff out of devices. And when it comes to space on the one side the Mars landers aren't being on Mars, on the other it'll take most of the "news" out of going to Mars. Now here's images just like the landers - except with people in them.

Personally I think one of the most exciting parts of space - searching for other earth-like planets - is happening right now. Good candidates are likely to show up in my lifetime, not in 500+ years. If we can find some, then going to Titan is a lot less interesting. Then people will dream of crossing the interstellar void and reaching "new earth". That's the thing about science, we always move the goal posts.

We could do it so if humanity wasn't so sort-sighted...all the resources spent in wars could have easily be used to built an Orion class spaceship in orbit with artificial gravity from rotating modules.

The Orion spaceship is the easy part, "Political Science" is the hard one. We're making some progress on the political front, if we could only get the politicians serving the majority of the people, I think we'd be in great shape.

There is the offsetting Bread and Circuses [wikipedia.org] problem with direct democracy - an overnight revolution establishing true democracy would probably lead to a breakdown of society sufficiently dramatic to erase the technology that makes direct democracy possible - catch 22 if you will.

Still, it would be gratifying to just once see a majority of the US Federal Congress vote for something (important, like tax rates) that serves the majority of the people - directly, without waiting for the benefits to "trickle down"

Hi, my name is Joh Deoxiao and I have a limit on data sent through this tap, so I'll get straight to the point: we don't want any of you primitives from the dark ages in our time. I know that you're only like that because you're so energy-deprived that you actually need to do slave work in order to obtain fuel for your cars and have energy delivered to you from power plants. You don't have the basic amenities like fusegens in your shabby brick homes, your farms aren't in automatic reflective folding silos a

In all fairness, we might (notice the attention I give to that word) be closer to such explorations than anyone thinks.

While we're certainly decades if not centuries away from being able to physically travel even as close as Titan, "Quantum Entanglement" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spooky_action) might allow for instantaneous communication across distance.

That would allow, with current technology, robotic probes possessing human levels of sophistication because it would alleviate the need for advanced Art

Yep. Title of Submission: "Titan May Have Ocean". First sentence:" Titan, has been a particular focus of attention because of its dense, complex atmosphere, its weather and its lakes and oceans". Summary seems to not really make sense until you go to the article which states it's a subsurface ocean.

I'm not sure what the ice on the surface would be made of, or what the density of the liquid methane ocean would be since density depends on pressure, but Methane Clathrate ice is about twice as dense as liquid methane is at atmospheric pressure. Pure methane ice is less dense than liquid methane, so would behave like water ice, but I think it's unlikely to be pure.

at least at its point of impact, I think the Huygens probe (that Cassini dropped on Titan) did identify water ice (plus lots of organic compounds).I sort of remember the "pebbles are water ice that'll never flow" story...

find a pocket of oxygen in the midst of all the other gases and away you go--seriously, if even a small amount of oxygen were found on any of the gas giants, there would probably be enough for as long as we needed it (64k should be enough for anyone too after all).

Titan, has been a particular focus of attention because of its dense, complex atmosphere, its weather and its lakes and oceans.

It's more than just a bit strange to claim in the title that Titan may have an ocean, and then state in the first line the planet is of particular interest because it has lakes and oceans. Please, editors, it's a (possible) subsurface ocean.

After six months of careful study i have determined that the presence of weather, lakes and oceans on Titan indicate that it may in fact have an individual ocean. In the next six months i plan to show that Titan also has an individual lake, followed by showing the existence of an individual cloud. May i have another funding check now please?

I've always wondered what would happen if we were to take sulfur based life and crash it into io or some similar creature and crash it into some other planet it would do well on. mountain top lichen might do well on mars after all.

LOL, normally on/. we get mad at people for taking one scientific study at face value before it's been reviewed or corroborated. Let me know when you have a probe on Titan to verify the presence of this ocean that we think "may" be there based on limited observational evidence which is not yet strong enough to draw a scientifically rigorous conclusion. Until then, don't muddy the waters by asserting certainty where there is none. If all you want are the "facts" produced by scientific research, then don'

"It's also worth pointing out that there is another explanation for Titan's strange moment of inertia. The calculations assume that the moon's orbit is in a steady state but it's also possible that Titan's orbit is changing, perhaps because it has undergone a recent shift due to some large object passing nearby, a comet or asteroid, for example."

(... and not even the ice geysers of Enceladus should sway our choice).

Why? Because as Professor Peter Ward claims in his very interesting book on astro-biology "Life as we do not know it", only "Titan holds the promise of not just alien life but of MORE THAN ONE KIND OF FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT alien life". (emphasis mine). There could be."three distinct empires of life, from two entirely different trees; CHON life of two kinds (ammono and water CHON life) and silicon life." (p. 234). While he said the "CHON ammono life would be found, presumably beneath the ice, in the ammonia ocean" and the "silicon life would exist, if it existed at all, in the ethane-methane lakes of Titan's surface" he thought the "earthlike" CHON life would be found in the transient freshwater lakes after an asteroid or comet impact.

Well, if there is a (huge) water ocean beneath the ice (and below the ammonia ocean?) the earthlike CHON life wouldn't have to depend on transient impact events! I guess the reason why the researchers believe the ocean to be water (as opposed to the methane the Technology Review editors seem to think), is because the temperature and pressure at those depths make water the most likely candidate. So anyway to recap, on Titan there are a possibility of THREE COMPLETELY different "empires" (his term) of life with only one of them having even the remotest possibility of being anything like life on earth (even if it is earthlike CHON life, that means only that it uses the carbon and other atoms at energy levels corresponding to liquid water, they might not use DNA, RNA or even proteins!).

The reasons why (he suggests) we should skip over Mars, Europa (and I presume Enceladus) is as follows: while Mars was certainly once capable of supporting (Earthlike CHON) life, now it is cold, dry and likely dead. For Europa (and Enceladus) he claims that while they have the liquid water necessary to support (again earthlike CHON) life, they don't have enough energy. His calculations show that the gravitational flexing caused by Jupiter, the main source of energy for Europa, would only be enough to drive a modest ecosystem that would be dispersed in an ocean of millions of cubic kilometers of water. Too dilute to be sustainable. (The same would be presumably be true to an even greater extent of Enceledus).

Titan, on the other hand, is large enough to presumably be able to generate heat internally (it is the largest moon in the solar system) and also gets (some) energy from tidal interactions with Saturn. An interesting additional input is the (weak) ultraviolet rays from the (distant) sun that hits its atmosphere (the only substantial one of any moon) and creates a whole host of organic compounds. Finally if his speculations on the other empires of life are correct, their much colder metabolism may allow (require?) them to exist on much less energy our liquid water based ones do.

This is, of course, rank speculation but the finding a new empire of life would be truly monumental, it would mean life is likely present in every solar system in the galaxy. Of course even finding "earthlike" CHON life would be astounding. Anyway, if the beauty of Saturn's rings weren't enough, this is another great reason to go back. Besides landing and exploring Titan could be comparatively easy. Aeorobraking, aerocapture and reentry will save a lot of fuel compared with landing on an airless world. Parachutes alone will work extremely well in the dense atmosphere and low gravity (unlike Mars) as will planes and hot "air" balloons. The surface ocean is likely to be very calm so boats and submersibles should be usable. There is also land for rovers and drilling operations. The only problem is distance (and money), so let's get cracking on nuclear powered ion engines!

Too bad it would take about a year to get to Titan. The best option would be to find some way to go 10 percent the speed of light like a Fusion rocket engine. Then we could get there in 12 hours (relative to the traveler).

Yeah, but Europa also has that weird orange colored water seeping through the ice cracks. That seems like strong enough evidence of something weird going on to investigate. More direct evidence than speculation I mean.

FTFS: "The numbers indicate that Titan's moment of inertia can only be explained if it is a solid body that is denser near the surface than it is at its centre"

FTFA: "It's also worth pointing out that there is another explanation for Titan's strange moment of inertia. The calculations assume that the moon's orbit is in a steady state but it's also possible that Titan's orbit is changing, perhaps because it has undergone a recent shift due to some large object passing nearby, a comet or asteroid, for example."

It's less of a summary and more of a copy/paste straight from the article. The weird comma after the first word comes from the fact that they didn't copy/paste the whole sentence, probably mistaking the word Titan for the start of the sentence because it has a capital letter and just happened to break into a new-line of the article. The full sentence is:

Saturn's largest moon, Titan, has been a particular focus of attention because of its dense, complex atmosphere, its weather and its lakes and oceans.